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Python GUI Programming with Tkinter

By : D. Moore

3.9 (22)

Python GUI Programming with Tkinter

3.9 (22)

By: D. Moore

Overview of this book

Tkinter is a lightweight, portable, and easy-to-use graphical toolkit available in the Python Standard Library, widely used to build Python GUIs due to its simplicity and availability. This book teaches you to design and build graphical user interfaces that are functional, appealing, and user-friendly using the powerful combination of Python and Tkinter. After being introduced to Tkinter, you will be guided step-by-step through the application development process. Over the course of the book, your application will evolve from a simple data-entry form to a complex data management and visualization tool while maintaining a clean and robust design. In addition to building the GUI, you'll learn how to connect to external databases and network resources, test your code to avoid errors, and maximize performance using asynchronous programming. You'll make the most of Tkinter's cross-platform availability by learning how to maintain compatibility, mimic platform-native look and feel, and build executables for deployment across popular computing platforms. By the end of this book, you will have the skills and confidence to design and build powerful high-end GUI applications to solve real-world problems.

Preface

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

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Free Chapter

Introduction to Tkinter

Introduction to Tkinter

Introducing Tkinter and Tk

Introducing IDLE

Creating a Tkinter Hello World

Summary

Designing GUI Applications with Tkinter

Designing GUI Applications with Tkinter

A problem at ABQ AgriLabs

Documenting specification requirements

Designing the application

Summary

Creating Basic Forms with Tkinter and ttk Widgets

Creating Basic Forms with Tkinter and ttk Widgets

Evaluating our technology choices

Exploring Tkinter widgets

Implementing the application

Summary

Reducing User Error with Validation and Automation

Reducing User Error with Validation and Automation

Validating user input

Validation in Tkinter

Implementing validated widgets in our form

Automating input

Summary

Planning for the Expansion of Our Application

Planning for the Expansion of Our Application

Separating concerns

Structuring our application directory

Splitting our application into multiple files

Using version control software

Summary

Creating Menus with Menu and Tkinter Dialogs

Creating Menus with Menu and Tkinter Dialogs

Solving problems in our application

Implementing simple Tkinter dialogs

Designing our menu

Making our settings work

Summary

Navigating Records with Treeview

Navigating Records with Treeview

Implementing read and update in the model

Implementing a record list view

Modifying the record form for read and update

Updating the rest of the application

Summary

Improving the Look with Styles and Themes

Improving the Look with Styles and Themes

Working with images in Tkinter

Styling Tkinter widgets

Styling Ttk widgets

Summary

Maintaining Cross-Platform Compatibility

Maintaining Cross-Platform Compatibility

Writing cross-platform Python

Writing cross-platform Tkinter

Improving our application's cross-platform compatibility

Summary

Creating Automated Tests with unittest

Creating Automated Tests with unittest

Automated testing basics

Testing Tkinter code

Writing tests for our application

Summary

Improving Data Storage with SQL

Improving Data Storage with SQL

PostgreSQL

SQL and relational database basics

Modeling relational data

Creating the ABQ database

Integrating SQL into our application

Summary

Connecting to the Cloud

Connecting to the Cloud

HTTP using urllib

HTTP using requests

FTP using ftplib

Summary

Asynchronous Programming with Thread and Queue

Asynchronous Programming with Thread and Queue

Tkinter's event queue

Running code in the background with threading

Passing messages using a queue

Summary

Visualizing Data Using the Canvas Widget

Visualizing Data Using the Canvas Widget

Drawing and animation with Tkinter's Canvas

Creating simple graphs on the canvas

Advanced graphs using Matplotlib and Tkinter

Summary

Packaging with setuptools and cx_Freeze

Packaging with setuptools and cx_Freeze

Using setuptools

Using cx_Freeze

Building Windows executables with cx_Freeze

Building macOS executables with cx_Freeze

Summary

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Building Windows executables with cx_Freeze

To get our build working correctly on Windows, we'll need to work around a couple of bugs in the current versions of cx_Freeze and Python 3.6: first, cx_Freeze relies on two environment variables pointing to the location of the Tcl and Tk libraries, which are no longer set on Windows, and, second, it fails to copy the Tcl and Tk DLL files to the program directory. Take the following steps to correct this:

Start by creating a conditional block for Windows builds in cxsetup.py:

import platform
import os
if platform.system() == "Windows":
    PYTHON_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.__file__))

Inside the block, we're determining the directory containing our Python installation by getting the parent directory of the os library. We'll use this to locate the Tcl and Tk libraries.

Now add the environment variables...

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